


Cot

by yeaka



Series: Yutopian Zoo [10]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Ears, Animal Traits, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 20:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12991929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeaka/pseuds/yeaka
Summary: Victor takes his new hybrid home.





	Cot

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is set in the same partial-animal AU as some of my other ficlets, but it’s stand-alone and you don’t need to read them for this. (Last time human!Victor bought serow!Yuuri from the zoo.)
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Yuri on Ice or any of its contents, and I’m not making any money off this.

Yuuri hated the car, though not quite as much as the plane, but he _loves_ running through the snow up to Victor’s cabin. He leaps through it like he used to do when he was young, bounding far ahead of Victor only to turn and hop back, while Victor eyes him fondly. Yuuri’s cheeks keep heating up, his gaze falling away. It’s not even mating season yet, and Victor makes him feel... 

Victor chuckles when Yuuri stops to pluck a few leaves off a nearby bush, and then he’s rushing back to Victor’s side, nibbling on the ends as he goes. The whole place is _full_ of greenery, buried in thick white—there’s a massive forest sprawling back behind them, the car tucked into a wooden shed. The trail they blaze is snow-only, and then they’re at the steps of the tan-brown cabin. Victor has to fish the keys out of his pocket, breathing out little puffs of opaque clouds. Yuuri used to wonder what keys were, and _why_ they were, even after Phichit explained it all to him. But now he thinks he understands. Humans are complicated, and some of them are _bad_ , like the poachers that hunt hybrids, and of course Victor will want to keep them out. 

When Victor clicks the door open, he offers, “I can get you some keys.” At Yuuri’s shocked expression, Victor corrects, “Or just leave the door open for you when you’re out? We’re pretty far from civilization up here...” He taps his chin, like he sometimes does when he’s thinking, and Yuuri just tilts his head.

He thinks to ask, “Can I come in any time?”

“Of course,” Victor answers, like there was never any question. Then he smiles and adds, “My home is your home.”

If another male serow said that to him, Yuuri thinks they’d be literally butting heads. He’s never wanted to share territory before. But when Victor says it, it makes him grin, and he wishes Victor had scent glands like him, so they could mark the cabin up together.

He’ll try to leave Victor’s cabin alone, of course. He knows humans don’t like the smell, and he doesn’t want to offend another male by marking their territory. But the instinct still buzzes in him, and he tries to squash it down as he follows Victor inside.

Victor’s all bundled up for the cold—a thick jacket, a thicker scarf, and boots that go halfway to his knee. He shuts the door behind him and starts peeling things off, while Yuuri just sort of stands there, adjusting to the new environment around his zoo-issued black coverall. He was built for colder climates, and though he feels a slight chill now, he knows even that will go away. When Victor’s down to jeans and a sweater, he kneels in front of Yuuri to get Yuuri’s boots off, which Yuuri’s grateful for. Victor was the one to put them on in the first place. Yuuri doesn’t need them—his feet might _look_ like a human’s, but they’re tough as hooves, and he’d be naked if he could. If it wouldn’t offend Victor. And he sort of likes Victor dressing him—it’s like a mate grooming him. When Victor’s down to socks and Yuuri’s barefoot, Victor moves them onwards, flicking light-switches as they go. 

Everything’s still strange to Yuuri, though the zoo introduced him to a lot, and his handler—Phichit—was talkative and helpful. As Victor takes them down the little hallway, Yuuri’s neck cranes back to spy the glowing orb attached to the ceiling, nothing like the sun or moon. The first door they come to is like the doors the zoo had on its buildings, and Victor opens it to gesture through a room with tiles like the washing rooms. “This is the bathroom,” Victor tells him, which Yuuri thinks means the same thing. Yuuri recognizes most of the things in it, except whatever the large block with the curtain is—it looks like the tub Yuuri was bathed in, but with a strange covering. 

It prompts Yuuri to wonder aloud, “Should I... um... bathe sometimes? So I don’t bother you with my smell...?”

Victor blinks at him, clearly surprised, then asks, “Did you before?”

Yuuri nods, though he didn’t _really_ , back when he was loose in the wild, before the poachers came and made it all too dangerous. “I knew where hot springs were in the wild, and at the zoo, Phichit bathed me...” Victor’s face stains slightly pink, and he frowns. Yuuri doesn’t understand. He wonders if Victor’s just now realizing how _different_ they are, and maybe how ill fit Yuuri is for him.

But then Victor offers, “I could bathe you.”

And Yuuri perks up again, agreeing, “Thank you.” Victor grins, and for a moment, they’re just staring into one another. Victor’s eyes are brilliantly blue, though his silver hair half covers one side 

When they first pulled up in the car, all Yuuri wanted to do was run off into the mountains—they rose up behind the cabin like a whole new world, mammoth and unexplored, just waiting for Yuuri’s eager feet. He thought he’d spend most of his time there.

But if he spends time in the cabin, he’ll be _with Victor_ , and he wants that too.

Victor turns away first, gesturing across the hall to the next door. He opens it to reveal a large rectangular box and some shelving units. Victor tells him, “This is a second bedroom—you can use it any time.” It makes Yuuri remember what a _bed_ is. It doesn’t look particularly comfortable—strangely flat and inorganic. But he nods politely the way humans do.

Next, the hall opens into the kitchen, and Yuuri understands that least of all, but Victor doesn’t spend much time on it—they learned early on that they have very different diets. Yuuri knows Victor heard it all again when his purchase of Yuuri went through—the zoo, and Phichit in particular, loaded Victor up with papers on proper serow-hybrid care. Yuuri thinks he can mostly take care of himself, but he’s honoured by how much Victor seems to care about helping him.

After the kitchen comes the living space—Victor pulls out a chair at the ‘dining table,’ and Yuuri just sort of looks at it—he’s _never_ understood chairs. Victor just laughs and points out the ‘television’ and the ‘fire place’ and a few other things that the zoo didn’t have. Then he gestures to the stairs along the wall, and Yuuri looks up to a railing on what Victor calls the ‘second landing.’ “That’s the loft,” he explains, “which is where _I_ sleep.” Yuuri looks at him, wanting, hoping, and then Victor says it: “You can stay there any time.”

Beaming, Yuuri rushes over, leaping up the steps like he would a mountain pass. He’s on the second landing in a heartbeat, looking everywhere—the ceiling’s a triangle, strangely tented, and there’s a huge bed with a little table beside it and a few other drawers and things like what the handlers kept supplies in. Yuuri heads straight to the bed, delighting in Victor’s invitation, but he’s tentative as he clambers onto it. It’s... weird. It’s _soft_ and sort of springy, but not like anything Yuuri could explain. He tries to lie down on it, curling his legs up against the warmth of his midsection like he would in the wild. That’s when Victor makes it to the top of the stairs, encumbered by his slower human gait. 

He looks at Yuuri in his bed, blank faced at first, then smiling so broadly with his brows knit together and his cheeks flush. That expression alone has so much _emotion_ in it that Yuuri’s chest clenches. He doesn’t know what to do, so he just mumbles, “It’s soft.”

“You don’t have to sleep there,” Victor tells him, but something in Victor’s eyes is saying something different—maybe he _wants_ Yuuri too.

Yuuri wants to sleep next to Victor. He knows he’s not in rut, but he _wants to_. Victor makes him feel all sorts of things that he didn’t know he could. 

Like embarrassment. He forces himself to sit up again, still perched in the middle of the bed, and he hums, “What else?”

“Not much,” Victor says, “but come back downstairs and I’ll show you the porch.”

Feeling sort of sorry to leave the bed, Yuuri follows Victor back down into the living room. It’s full of wide, tall windows that look out into the mountains beyond, just starting to get dark and washing the snow blue-purple for it. Victor brings Yuuri back to the kitchen and dining part, where there’s a glass door like in the isolation room Yuuri would be put in during rut. “You open it like this,” Victor says, as he flicks a mechanism on the handle and slides it back. He shuts the door again, then gestures Yuuri to try, and Yuuri does—it moves cleanly open, revealing the crisp evening air and the rich scent of the woods. Before the mountain lies a lake that’s frozen over, and Victor suggests, “We could try skating tomorrow.”

“I want to,” Yuuri agrees. But first, he asks, “Can I go exploring?”

“You can do whatever you want,” Victor promises. “And I think it’s safe here, too far for any hunters to come, but... I’d like it if you came back every few days to check in, so I know you’re okay. Or sooner. As much as you want.”

Yuuri knows that he’ll be back before nightfall. He wants to snuggle with Victor in the loft, and he wants to rub his scent glands against the wooden posts of Victor’s bed. He says, “I will.” 

And he goes up to kiss Victor’s cheek like he’s seen humans do, then nuzzles into Victor’s face like hybrids do, and then he goes running off into the snow.


End file.
